The Life of Thomas Cromwell
The Kingmaker Complex and British Politics
When I was in university, one of the moderately anticipated events in the academic calendar was the release of Diarmiad MacCullogh’s biography of Thomas Cromwell. Interest in this Tudor bureaucrat had been reignited by his dramatic portrayal as a muttering Lib Dem in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. Cromwell already occupied a neurotically commanding role in the English curriculum, on account of Geoffrey Elton’s decision to use him as a protagonist in his story of how England developed the first modern state; a thesis which subsequently provided much girst to the mills of academic controversy. As far as I recall, the biography was disappointing, the sort of half-hearted, pseudo-revisionism timorous academics fall into when they lack the balls for Eltonian pomp or the humility for competent summaries of existing material.
The character of Cromwell, as presented by Elton, is a powerful political archetype; the shadowy, dull bureaucrat-cum-intellectual who becomes a perfect instrument for the appetites of an indolent tyrant, thereby gaining remit to refashion the state, and the souls of the people, under his nose. It was ably channelled by Dick Cheney under George W. Bush, and resembles another great political model of the 2010s, Caro’s LBJ. Two prominent figures of my civic adolescence consciously aspired to such a role, Steve Bannon under Donald Trump and Dominic Cummings under Boris Johnson. It is easy to see why, if, like me, you are doomed to a life of “interested in politics” while being congenitally unpopular and “weird”, puppeting someone much dumber than you with an appetite for fame makes sense. The proxy takes all the tabloid flak while you can get on with the pressing business of building those bloody houses.
If you find yourself serving a leader who is a publicist, a lightweight, a vacillating liar and showman; then this is very good if you are, yourself, diligent, perspicacious and intelligent. To lament the boss’s faults shows only your own weakness. The game is very simple: keep your head down; provide the solutions otherwise beyond the ken, yet within the credit, of your master. If you want, for example, to establish greater administrative clarity in a political party; the simple thing to do, under a lazy leader, is to simply establish ‘the shadow cabinet’ yourself and present it to the boss as the fruits of his own imagination (‘I remember you were talking about this’.) Henry VIII used to physically beat Cromwell. Kingmakers belong to the lower castes. If you do this, you will find that you rapidly end up exercising the ‘real’ power in the state; you will know the civil servants, the drudgery-operators, on whom the successful execution of orders depends; you can even substitute your own orders for that of the King, if you do so discretely. The role of the kingmaker is not constitutionally defined, he exists by virtue of an entirely personal relationship to the nominal sovereign, insofar as he has the sovereign’s trust he can be omnipotent. For example, compare Cummings’ moralistic charyness in Number 10 with the cheerful Machiavellianism of Bismarck. Bismarck stole the treasury of a small country and used it as a source of bribes for decade, Dark Dom couldn’t even bring himself to help Boris get some new wallpaper for his house: the sort of thing which cost nothing in policy terms and would’ve garnered infinite goodwill from the boss.
Of course, a puppet-master cannot be entirely servile. When the Sovereign does something which seriously interferes with policy, it is right to stand up. But there is only one way for a puppet-master to stand up and that is to fall on his sword. When the Kaiser and Bismarck disagreed, the Freiherr knew he only ever had one card to play, and offered his resignation. The same tactic was employed by Stalin when the Central Committee, at the instigation of Kamenev, briefly attempted to curtail his powers; and Ivan IV when he feigned madness, retiring to his country dacha, until the nobility came begging on his doorstep for a resumption of the tyranny they had so recently resented. If you are the competent underling of a lazy tyrant, the greatest resource you have is your own labour. You ought to trust in your abilities to such an extent that it is generally believed, without your presence, the whole operation will collapse. Indispensability is not something one can earn or bestow upon oneself, it is its own test. The great mistake of many aspiring Cromwells is to believe they can use their influence to obstruct the tyrant’s will. This never works. What happens is that you end up taking the blame for the bad policy, without ever perverting it into something good; while earning the tyrant’s enmity.
If a puppet-master does decide to get rid of the puppet, they can only afford to strike once and the first strike must be crippling, they must choose the correct timing. “Briefing" anything but total loyalty to the King until you have gathered your forces is pointless.
Why have so many puppet-masters failed? Fame is a deadly chemical. It is underrated by all would-be puppetmasters how even a small amount of attention can spiritually alter a person. Mild social media engagement, let alone being in Number 10, with people pretending you are important, is enough to create the illusion of importance. This is why the various attempts by influential Conservative Party networks to put a string of puppets into power have all failed. Rishi Sunak was supposed to be the safe pair of hands who would acquiesce to the demands of Dark Wonkdom, yet he quickly developed his own ideas and found his own people. The same thing will happen with future attempts to rule by patsies. It is ultimately futile to try and manipulate another person to be the public face of your movement unless you are good at your job.
Well, with these historical anecdote done, we better talk about Rupert Bear and Fruity Nige. It is not an issue wherein I see much affecting the Meritocratic Movement but certain people on x were eager for us to comment.